That Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love, would prove a challenge to get published had always been known. Potential traditional publishers had no problems admiring its bold creativity and uninhibited spiritual intensity. What most could not accept was something traditionally troublesome when it comes to artists and the marketplace: the financial risks involved.​With all respect to healthy doubts and sensible reservations, so far as Luther and I were concerned the years of energy, labor, and determination already invested in Elemental by the time 2006 rolled around equated to something more than a calculated transactional value. From the perspectives of our deepest meditations and intentions, the completion of Elemental meant contributing to the cultural legacies established by creative artists like those who made possible such movements as Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and the Harlem Renaissance. This last, especially, was one which had already stamped our destinies as Luther had studied with artists of the Harlem Renaissance and I had already co-authored Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.

The center image for this art graphic features the first two stanzas of a poem by Aberjhani from ELEMENTAL (p. 22) titled "Past, Present & Future Are One" based on a Luther E. Vann painting of the same title. The third-eye illustration seen above was drawn by Jason Maurer when the poem was published in the former SCAD newspaper The Georgia Guardian in 1993, 15 years prior to the publication of ELEMENTAL. The combined creative synergy demonstrates how ELEMENTAL has helped to inspire and empower others from the beginning.

But once creative passion and committed partners empowered us to finally produce a physical book, we reached two important conclusions. First: we recognized the need to articulate, both for potential buyers and booksellers, as definitively as we could, the goals and values inherent in Elemental. Secondly: it seemed obvious the work could be adapted for different mediums. These considerations resulted in the following statements:

ILLUMINATED LOVE

1) The vision behind ILLUMINATED LOVE is that human beings and the environments we inhabit are inherently multidimensional in ways that are typically ignored but which can make our lives richer and more fulfilling than generally recognized or consciously experienced.

2) The mission of ILLUMINATED LOVE is to express through visual art, poetry, and music the creative and spiritual harmony that connects shared public spaces with individual need and existence; and, to demonstrate the multidimensional nature of the same.

3) The objective and/or goal of ILLUMINATED LOVE is to provide a product that functions as a source of entertainment, as inspiration, and as an enhanced tool for the study of employing complementary creative genres within an appealing multi-media format.

When envisioning Elemental as a staged musical or as a video production, I described it thus:

...An exploration and documentation of the way human beings occupy public spaces in interpretative contrast to how they experience inner spaces... It illustrates the way collective intention makes communal interaction possible while individual need and impulse maintain the integrity of a person's separate being.

For example, the Luther E. Vann painting "Christ Listening to Stereo" (p. 27) is of a youth on a bus in New York City (please see image below). The image reveals how the youth is at once physically part of a larger setting while remaining, via his personal stereo, completely apart from it. Immersed in his music, he claims a connection to the artist who made the music and who allows him to not only share in the expressed creative passion, but to utilize the same as a kind of soundtrack for his own anticipations, memories, desires, needs, or fears of the moment. Very similar and yet very different scenes are enacted in such public spaces as parks, malls, back yards, office buildings, clubs, and street corners. They all make the individual part of a larger whole even while many individuals continue to exist primarily as isolated fragments of that whole.

The image used for the cover of the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player is from a section of Vann's painting "Christ Listening to Stereo."

​From One President and Generation to the Next

​Some might consider the timelessness of the project a good thing in regard to aesthetics but then questionable for the way Elemental's implied commentaries on social and political conditions of a decade ago remain relevant today. In this sense, it continues to illuminate how our least and most desirable practices impact humanity's quest for mutually-advantageous coexistence.

Another example: the ebb and flow of dismay and inspiration from the time of publication until now might be seen in criticisms of former President George Bush's administration as the book was heading to the printer in early 2008. Likewise: less that a year later, after its publication, came Barack H. Obama's unprecedented election to the White House followed by eight years of spectacular innovations and shifts in public consensus regarding everything from race relations and gender equality to environmentalism and economic reforms. And now: current POTUS Donald Trump continues to implement policies resulting in a tug of war between the Oval Office and American citizens committed to resistance.

From one president to the next and one generation the next, Elemental has always proposed for leaders and followers alike a path of informed awareness built on common ground:

The states of interaction with one another and estrangement from each other represent states of being, or levels of reality, that the artist seeks to capture and identify in order to understand their possible implications and consequences in the modern world. Social conditions and activities indicate different outcomes. Some appear to thrive in powerful socially rewarding ways—such as economic advancement or political prestige––while others seem to quietly wither away, turning into the infamous "damned souls" of the world existing in states of perpetual despair leading to the destruction of self and others.

In its essence, Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love, maintains we are all on a quest to experience qualities of compassion and acceptance capable of helping to sustain both the individual and the larger society. Because such a journey tends to take place even more within than without, the visual imagery, words, and music of ILLUMINATED LOVE incorporates both levels of that reality.

Admittedly, those words might sound a bit more grandiloquent than intended. That does not mean they are any less sincere or applicable.

Powerful and Cherished Allie

​This celebration of the 10th anniversary of a book of art and poetry is not to suggest that such a volume holds the key to solving all the world's very serious problems. It is, however, to suggest that humanity for too long has remained too comfortable investing faith in fear and violence. Student walk-outs in protest against gun violence in their schools, calls for police policy and training reform, the #MeToo movement, and resistance to government policies which threaten to widen even further the gap between "haves and have-nots" prove the need and desire for something more healing and beneficial than relentlessly suffocating trauma.

We celebrate Elemental because it identifies not just a potential but a capability already within our reach. It helps take the edge off the impulse to destroy what we fear to understand and allows sufficient time to remind ourselves of this: Love, Knowledge, and Beauty are not our enemies. Whether dressed up as art, poetry, or a simple smile, they have always been among our most powerful life-sustaining allies.

Not quite 2 years ago (February 12, 2016) I wrote the following regarding the publication of a new edition of my novel, Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World, now titled Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Player, on the publication streaming site known as #FreedReads:

‘Freed Reads hopes to help combat those problems [associated with illiteracy] by doing for reading what #YouTube and #Netflix have done for viewing. But is such a thing possible? Can books be streamed in a manner that proves satisfactory to #stakeholders at every level? Freed Reads’ founders decided that the idea is worth investing sufficient time, labor, and pioneering technology to find out…” (from Christmas Gets a Valentine’s Day Weekend Reboot)​I also felt the innovation was worth taking time to investigate its possibilities. For me, that meant taking a leap of faith and placing Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player in the Australia-based publisher’s hands.

Bad News, Good News, and More Good News

With the stiff competition that seasoned organizations like Amazon and various retail chain giants always present to newcomers, the venture at first gained some respectable ground. Recently, however, owners decided the operation in its current form would not be able to survive and the website hosting it is now offline.

The good news is that although Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player is no longer available as a “Freed Read,” the original Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World underground classic edition can still be purchased in both copy and digital formats at the following links:

The other upside to recent developments is that the Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Player edition is now available for a traditional publisher to consider its publication and distribution.

About Aberjhani

​On any given day of the week, the creator of Postered Chromatic Poetics and co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Aberjhani, may be found wearing any number of hats: historian, visual artist, poet, advocate for compassion, novelist, journalist, photographer, and editor. Having recently completed a book of creative nonfiction on his hometown of Savannah, Georgia (USA) he is currently working on a play about the implications of generational legacies as symbolized by efforts to rename the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge.

Screenshot of JK Rowling on Twitter with tweet showing mega truck driver assisting residents of Texas during floods that followed Hurricane Harvey in September 2017. Please see below for full AFP News Video.

World-changing catastrophes––like the earthquake that struck Mexico on September 7, and the back-to-back twin maelstroms, Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma, that rocked the United States this month––have a way of bringing to the surface humanity’s innate, but too often dormant, capacity for compassion. The life-and-death dilemmas they create strip us of the conditioned tendencies that cause people to fixate on superficial differences which encourage needless conflict rather than focus on shared commonalities that make community-building possible.
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In their aftermath, we often see concrete demonstrations of exceptional considerations not only through the actions of celebrities like Beyoncé and Stevie Wonder who donate their time and talents to raise millions of dollar to support relief efforts. We also see it in the less glamorous actions performed by ordinary citizens contributing in whatever humble way they can.

Varieties of Angels and Monster Truck Drivers

On September 4, famed British author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, shared this quote by me on Twitter: “Varieties of angels, like varieties of love, are many” (Aberjhani). The quotation was posted along with a video, from AFP News Agency, in which the driver of a mega truck, a bearded white male, is seen wheeling his way through the flooded streets of Port Arthur, Texas, helping people cope with the ravages of Hurricane Harvey.
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In this day and age of strained racial anxieties in America and around the world, many people would hesitate to associate the driver in the video with the concept of angelic behavior. As he admits himself, the gargantuan-wheeled trucks are something he and others usually utilize for fun in ways rarely considered heroic. However, the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey provided an opportunity to employ the vehicles in a completely different and literally life-saving kind of way:

“You know,” he said, “we’ve had people trying to pay us, but we’re not taking any money. The hugs and the kisses, and watching a grown man cry when you come save him, it’s all worth it.”

Such is the kind of disposition that makes an everyday culture of compassion both credible and possible. Like the giant truck seen in the video, compassion equips us with the means to move past the destructive elements that prevent us from connecting with the potential for greater higher good residing within everyone.

Mindful Considerations

That a global culture of compassion is needed now more than ever has become increasingly evident from by the nonstop talk of possible war between the U.S. and North Korea, and the string of terrorist attacks in London and elsewhere throughout the year 2017. The only thing standing in the way of citizens worldwide making it real is citizens worldwide making the choice to do so.

Most importantly, a true culture of compassion goes beyond basic acts of kindness to encompass mindful considerations of how everyday human activities, such as work, political engagement, social interactions, and economic enterprises either enhance or diminish the quality of human lives. In addition: it takes into account how our actions and aspirations impact the Earth’s ever-evolving biodiversity and general global environment.

One Good Quotation Deserves Another

Some have wondered what prompted celebrity author J.K. Rowling to use my specific quote and whether I had anything to do with the choice. My guess is her informed humane instincts were simply leaning in the same direction as the mega-truck driver’s in the video: toward compassion. It is not exactly something I could have influenced other than, like Rowling, by always striving to communicate something of value to humanity and hoping someone finds meaning in the attempt.
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And in this case, thus far some 11,094 re-tweeters have found the shared words valuable and more than 37,970 Twittizens have expressed appreciation by clicking the like button. That being said, the quotation was particularly apt for this specific video because both negate assumptions and prejudices, and both propose exercising a more expanded form of awareness.

My response to Rowling’s tweet was also an acknowledgement of the Dalai Lama’s observation that “we all possess the seeds of love and compassion.” Whether we take time to cultivate their growth, however, tends to be another matter. And where that is concerned, the tweet with which I replied to Rowling was a quote by her: “It is our choices... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities” (J.K. Rowling).

We can choose to evoke the angels our better nature because doing so makes life more joyfully sustainable for humanity as a whole, or we can choose to demonize each other based on such superficial differences as nationalities, religion, or race for no beneficial reason whatsoever. When tempted to give in to the latter, it is worth remembering that catastrophic events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and wildfires don’t ask for immigration papers, birth certificates, or bank account balances before bringing on the full unrelenting force of pure non-discriminating pain.

Author

Poet-Author-Artist Aberjhani spend almost a decade writing his most recently-completed manuscript on culture, history, and race relations in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia (USA). He is currently at work on a play about attempts to change the name of the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge.

For the part 1 introduction to this blog on artwork which has recently become available please check it out right here. Part 2 begins right here right now:

Beauty of the World's Fountains

​Fountains are among the most admired ornamental man-made structures because they combine the artistic beauty of refined sculpture with the precision of engineering and architecture. Celebrated examples can be found all over the world, including Savannah, Georgia. One of the city's most famous is the subject of two new Postered Chromatic Poetics images. Below is the accompanying text for the art and although I like both very much, I confess to being particularly pleased by the results achieved with Champagne Twilight:

Sepia Afternoon: Forsyth Park Fountain in Savannah, Georgia (USA)

​A solitary figure stops in front the Forsyth Park Fountain to enjoy one of the city of Savannah's most popular and majestic attractions.

Ever since the days following the American Civil War, the fountain has been a favorite location for residents and visitors alike to take photographs. During the war, the park was known as the South Common military encampment where prisoners of war, a hospital, and poor house were maintained.
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The fountain's spraying water is dyed green every year in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. In this image, late afternoon sunlight on a hot summer day creates an amber sepia haze that colors the air and water, slightly clarified and enhanced by digital filter.

Champagne Twilight: Forsyth Park Fountain in Savannah, Georgia (USA)

​The elegantly-sculpted Forsyth Park Fountain, also referred to as the Versailles Fountain, dates back to the 1850s when model for it was derived from French-styled designs of the period. Along with the Confederate Monument, this is one of the primary centerpieces of Forsyth Park. The present-day fountain is the result of many renovations over the past century and a half, including a complete restoration in 1988.

​A robed woman adorns the top of the fountain as water birds and tritons (or mermen) spout water below. In addition to benches that allow passersby to sit and enjoy the view, the fountain is surrounded by moss-covered oaks, palm trees, magnolias, and elms.

​Prior to becoming known as Forsyth Park, the location during the Civil War was the South Common military encampment where POWS and a hospital were maintained.

Author-Artist

Aberjhani is an American poet, historian, essayist, editor, journalist, social critic, and cautious artist. His many honors include the Choice Academic Title of the Year Award, the Notable Book of the Year Award, Outstanding Journalist, and Poet of the Year. He is currently completing final edits on a work of creative nonfiction about the cultural arts, race relations, immigration, and human trafficking in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia.

Adding the mantel of visual artist to that of wordsmith requires--aside from repeatedly earning such a title--doubling the secondary function of launching projects once they are either completed or close to completion. Some of us are naturals at it and others, like this author-artist, more likely to rely on the kindness of friends and pros.

With the ongoing soft launch of Postered Chromatic Poetics, one of the secondary devices employed has been a blog provided by the kind souls at Fine Art America and the camaraderie offered through the active clubs there. The club aspect is reminiscent of the Creative Thinkers International community once based at the Ning Network and I am often tempted to spend as much time there as here.

The Chromatic Poetics blog at FAA has been used primarily to introduce site visitors to new visual works, which is a good thing. Not so good is the present format restriction on images and links that can be included with it. So to help supplement those efforts, I am sharing below and in the next post the two most recent art entries with informational text and purchase widgets:

Dare to Love Life on National Selfie Day and Always

The Dare to Love Yourself "movement" had nothing to do with National Selfie Day when it began to slowly develop ten years ago. The well-known quote--"Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends."-- as many are now aware, originated with the poem Angel of Healing: for the Living, the Dying, and the Praying.

The poem was first published in the book The Bridge of Silver Wings and later in The River of Winged Dreams. It has become increasingly popular over the past few years as a rallying cry to support suicide prevention and to discourage suicide bombers. The association with National Selfie Day was never intentional but obviously a natural fit which hopefully helps encourage not narcissism, but a positive healthy self-image and a deep appreciation for all life.
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The following two art descriptions are for recently-added images that celebrate the potential healing capacity of love in all our lives:

Putting Self-Love in Chromatic Context

​Loving yourself isn't just about the photographs we post to our social media profiles to show the world we know how to have fun. It's mostly about recognizing where we fit in the larger scheme of things and how our lives contribute meaning and value to the world. Below is the image is the poem, published in The River of Winged Dreams, from which the dare-to-love-yourself quote is taken. The image itself is the second official Postered Chromatic Poetics artwork to feature it:

​Angel of Healing: for the Living, the Dying, and the Praying

1.
As you bury flesh––
honor spirit, savor hope,
cherish memory.

Consider heaven
as a world-weary stranger
asleep in your heart.

Quote words that affirm
all men and women are your
brothers and sisters.

Pull the child away
from feeding at the mule’s tail.
Give the baby food.

As Goes Love...

The title of this artwork comes from the poem "The Poet-Angels Who Came to Dinner" published in the book The River of winged Dreams. An earlier alternative version features a different color scheme:

The complete first stanza of the poem from which the quotation was taken reads as follows:
​I.Neither had been invited but both were welcomed.
They spoke through wordless intuition, cool nods of
"Peace-Be-Still," and, "As-Goes-Love-So-Goes-Life."

The design used for this one was chosen because instead of idealizing hopes centered around romantic love, it seeks to evoke the many nuances of all kinds of love: family, spiritual, friendship, joy of living, pursuit of creative goals, etc. It also acknowledges that Love is often as much a struggle to maintain as it is a pleasure to be experienced.

Author

Aberjhani is an American poet, historian, essayist, editor, journalist, social critic, and cautious artist. His many honors include the Choice Academic Title of the Year Award, the Notable Book of the Year Award, Outstanding Journalist, and Poet of the Year. He is currently completing final edits on a work of creative nonfiction about the cultural arts, race relations, immigration, and human trafficking in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia.